The Reform Bill of 1867 inaugurated a new era in the political history of Great Britain. By enlarging the electorate and increasing the possibilities for party organisation this Act brought to a close that period of the mid-nineteenth century when parties were in a state of flux. This was manifested in Parliament by a growing disparity between the popularly elected House of Commons and the hereditary based House of Lords. In 1868 and 1869 these bodies converged in a constitutional struggle over the disestablishment of the Irish Church. By toppling Disraeli from the premiership and acquiring a clear mandate from the electorate for a change in the status of the Irish Church Gladstone was able to make an irrefutable case for disestablishment. When Gladstone placed his bill before Parliament opposition developed in the first instance, as expected, from churchmen and Tories in the House of Lords who feared that the passage of disestablishment would admit a host of further changes in the constitution. Through the efforts of archbishop Tait, however, and other moderates the upper house wisely passed the principle of the bill. But opposition to the measure was based not so much on upholding the principle of establishment in Ireland, which was indefensible, but on a disagreement with the substance, or the details by which the Irish Church was to be disendowed. During the committee stage the House of Lords precipitated a crisis by so amending the bill as to maintain the financial security of the Irish Church. For the purpose of reaching a compromise on the disendowment clauses of the bill a conference of party leaders was summoned. To this end the mediation efforts of the queen were directed. But any settlement of the crisis depended in the final analysis on the extent of Conservative opposition and the ease with which party divisions could be bridged.

No doubt the metropolitan church of St Peter of York, which celebrated its 1350th anniversary two years ago, has always been a difficult institution for the outsider to comprehend; but in the later middle ages its organisation was at its most formidably complex. The reasons for that complexity need no particular urging nor indeed explanation. Even more than other major medieval cathedrals York. Minster fulfilled a wide variety of very different and at times conflicting purposes. As the single largest church within the pre-Reformation ecclesia Anglicana it was inevitably committed to an especially elaborate series of acts of worship in choir, in nave and at the many subsidiary altars with which the cathedral literally abounded. As a house of God deliberately rebuilt and refurnished as magnificently as possible during the later middle ages, it provided a focus of spiritual allegiance for the inhabitants of York and Yorkshire as well as courting the attention of pilgrims and visitors from other parts of England. As the largest religious corporation in the region, York Minster was especially familiar to popes and kings as the most important agency through which the surplus wealth of northern churches and their parishes could be diverted to the professional ‘permanent civil service’ which administered the detailed operations of the English church and state. Most important of all, and despite the personal absence of the archbishop himself, the cathedral of York was still performing its original function as the administrative and judicial head-quarters of thenorthernprovinceinanage when ‘if wecome, therefore, to a general conclusion with regard to the organization of English dioceses in the fifteenth century, we find that it has become highly centralized’.

The church of Exeter, although geographically remote from the centres of royal and ecclesiastical power in England, was in the twelfth century in no way isolated. The rule of the important royal clerk and ambassador, William de Warelwast (1107–37), destroyed its provincialism and much of its archaism; and in the second half of the century a connection with the church of Salisbury led to the influx of some interesting men. It may be that the intimate relationship with Canterbury, inaugurated by the election of Bartholomew, Archbishop Theobald'sformer clerk, to Exeter in 1161, and repaid by the final location of the Exeter clerk Baldwin on the primatial throne in 1184, was the more rewarding for both. But the seemingly largely one-way contribution of Salisbury to Exeter is just as interesting.

The title requires some explanation. There is no satisfactory generic term to cover the institutions and groups discussed in this paper. I have opted for ‘International Protestant Community’, because it he seems on the whole less unsatisfactory than the term ‘ecumenical movement’, which in contemporary parlance at least must include within its scope Catholics as well as non-Catholics. Even the narrower term has its defects, however, since many of the Anglicans who played prominent roles within these international organisations would have considered themselves more Catholic than Protestant, while the Orthodox who figured in at least some of them would not have considered themselves Protestant at all. But in the period reviewed here the dominant influences within this international community were undoubtedly Protestant and the description, International Protestant Community, though inadequate, is probably the least inadequate available.

Richard Baxter (1615–91) was possessed of that all-embracing curiosity, indefatigable energy and tenacious idealism which, as Reformation and Renaissance passed into the sober Augustan certainties of the Enlightenment, became ever rarer among Englishmen. His many-sidedness is reflected in the very different kinds of interest his career attracts. The ecclesiastical historian meets in Baxter both puritanism's most committed apologist and its most idiosyncratic representative, a man who, involved in every doctrinal controversy and every negotiation or conference convened to discuss a national church settlement, was to have a lasting influence on English Dissent. His participation in these debates is, however, more than a chapter in the history of later puritanism: it contributed to the development of seventeenth-century rationalism and liberalism and shows suggestive affinities with the thought of the Cambridge Platonists. There is, furthermore, contemporary relevance in Baxter's conception of ‘mere Christianity’: ‘the first exponent of Ecumenism in England’, he promoted ecclesiastical reconciliation, both practically, in the Worcestershire Association, and theologically, in the attempt of such treatises as Richard Baxter's Catholick Theologie (1675) to harmonise Calvinism and Arminianism.

A political volte face is always likely to compel attention, especially when performed by a leading politician who thereby seems to reverse his lifelong attitude. So it was in the case of Lord John Russell's hostility to the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales and his adoption of legislation against it. His actions brought him no profit but rather helped to weaken his position. For the Ecclesiastical Titles bill, while it may have been intended as a hopeful introduction to a firmer political existence, appears instead as the culmination of a long decline. Russell never succeeded in recapturing the fulfilment of the years 1828–32, when he played a central part in carrying great constitutional changes which vindicated his principles of religious and civil liberty. After this he witnessed the great reforms being carried by others; as his latest biographer states, ‘Peel had run off with the credit for the free trade policy, Palmerston for the conduct of foreign affairs, Disraeli for the second Reform Act, and Gladstone for the policy of justice to Ireland…’. Moreover, he removed some of the glory of his liberal attainments by writing the Durham Letter and adopting the Ecclesiastical Titles bill—though Russell disagreed with such an opinion, since he denied that it was illiberal to resist ‘papal aggression’. Behaviour so intriguing as Russell's in 1850–1 has naturally been the subject of a good deal of inquiry and comment, but further examination may help to show the comparative importance of factors which contributed to the Prime Minister's motives.

One of the more interesting personalities in the puritan party of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was the Kentish minister Josias Nicholls (1553–1639). In The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (1967) Professor P. Collinson notes Nicholls's importance on a number of occasions, paying particular attention to his tract The Plea of the Innocent (1602), which Collinson sees as exemplifying many of the attitudes and aspirations of the moderate wing of the party. A number of other works also mention Nicholls briefly and record the bare bones of his career, including his opposition to Whitgift in 1584 and his deprivation in 1602. But Nicholls remains a shadowy figure and the full significance of his contribution to the godly cause unclear.

Studies of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement in Britain have almost exclusively focused on the Church of England. The impact of the Catholic revival within Scotland has been accorded little attention. This neglect partly reflects the small size of the Episcopal Church in Scotland. Yet the subject deserves fuller consideration precisely because the minority Scottish Episcopal Church was, by the nineteenth century, more uniformly High Church in its theology and outlook than the Church of England, a fact which predisposed it to be peculiarly receptive to Tractarianism, which in turn exacerbated its relations with the dominant Presbyterian Kirk. The few serious studies of the question, however, have been coloured by an uncritical assumption that the movement's impact on the Episcopal Church was altogether positive and benign. The differences between the Tractarians and nonjuring episcopalians of the north have been overlooked or understated. While according due weight to the affinities and continuities between the two traditions, this article will question the standard Anglo-Catholic historiography and reveal the tensions within the Episcopal Church sharpened by the often negative influence of the Catholic revival when transported north of the border.

Historians of religion and society are often confronted with the difficult task of defining the distinctive characteristics of the various adherents of Church and chapel. Certainly, one of the most useful as well as the most frequently employed analytical tools in this endeavour has been the correlation of occupation to religious preference.1 While this approach can be, and has been, enormously revealing, it still has several distinct drawbacks. First, of course, there is the common problem of appropriately identifying and grouping the enormous variety and gradations of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled occupations. While the grouping of occupations itself presents several inherent difficulties, its use as an analytical tool is further restricted by the fact that while occupational identification may provide a rough guide to status levels in society, it can in no way compensate for our lack of knowledge of, for example, the range of earnings within a specific occupational group at any particular time.

This paper revisits the question of the influence of Jewish biblical exegesis on Christian scholars in twelfth-century France, by focusing in particular on Abelard's response to a question of Heloise in her Problemata about questions raised by 1 Samuel ii.35–6 (=1 Regum ii.35–6) concerning ‘the faithful priest’ prophesied as Eli's successor, the meaning of ‘will walk before my anointed’ and the nature of the offering his household should make. Abelard's discussion of the views of an unnamed Jewish scholar illustrates a consistent movement evident in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries for certain Christian exegetes to approach Jewish scholars to resolve problems posed by the text of the Old Testament. While the passage in 1 Samuel was traditionally interpreted in a Christocentric fashion, Heloise implicitly supports a more historical reading of the text in the question she puts to Abelard. The Jewish scholar's interpretation reported by Abelard is very close to that of Rashi's twelfth-century disciples.

In two texts written between 1185 and 1205, Gervase of Canterbury proposed a vision of the role of the Benedictine community of Christ Church in relation to the archbishop, their nominal abbot. In the Tractatus de combustione and the Actus pontificum, Gervase repeatedly presented the monks as the guardians of the archbishops' relics and memory. This in turn allowed him to establish close links between the prelates and a precise locus, the cathedral, in an attempt to reassert the traditional role of Christ Church as the archiepiscopal church at a time when this role was under threat.

From the early Reformation the Scottish Kirk had seen national public fasting as an essential exercise in furthering the spiritual, political and material well-being of the nation. For that reason fasts were held frequently, particularly at times of national crisis in Church and State. In 1706, with parliament about to deliberate on a treaty for an incorporating union with England, a national fast seemed an obvious step. The refusal of the Court party to grant a civil sanction to a fast therefore placed the issue to the forefront of national debate, providing the opposition with a major opportunity to disrupt the progress of the treaty.

What was the source of authority in the Church in Tudor England? This article traces the use of an ancient symbol of the power of metropolitan archbishops, the woollen pallium, between 1533 and 1603. The later Henrician Church saw this garment as a sign of royal supremacy. Under Mary, however, Archbishop Pole made extravagant claims which led the Elizabethan Church to reject earlier Tudor notions of this symbol. Set against the backdrop of the source of episcopal jurisdiction, this article traces the use of the pallium in England in a Church moving from Roman obedience to a Protestant settlement.

The central Middle Ages in western Europe witnessed both a significant growth in the cult of the Virgin Mary and the rise of the dualist heretical movements known as the Cathars. Whilst the Cathars' dualism meant they denied any role for the Virgin Mary in the incarnation, nevertheless they often assigned her an important place in their beliefs. This article explores the considerable affinities which existed between contemporary orthodox doctrines and heretical teachings on Mary and, through a case study of the Disputatio inter catholicum et paterinum hereticum, examines the close relationship between anti-Cathar polemic, orthodox biblical exegesis and heretical belief.

This paper reconsiders the first ‘General Chapter’ of Benedictine abbots (late 1131). To explain the timing and circumstances of this event, previous scholarship mostly referred to the influence of the Cistercians on reformist groups within ‘traditional’ monasticism. A closer look at the primary evidence reveals how the first General Chapter needs to be framed against the activities of overlapping coalitions of ecclesiastical and secular agents pursuing various political, ideological and institutional interests. It also allows the causes of the ensuing dispute with the Cluniacs to be established more securely, and provides new insights into contemporary usages of statutes and the semantics of the word ‘ordo’.

Recently it has been suggested that fundamental disagreements over the theology of grace had little impact upon parish life in early Stuart England. However, by considering the local circumstances and wider national repercussions of an open debate over predestination in the 1630s between two Norwich lecturers, William Bridge and John Chappell, this article will argue the contrary. It will show that the public nature of the clash between Bridge and Chappell, examined by the church courts, ensured that predestination became a politically divisive issue within Norwich's parishes on the eve of the English Civil War.

Using the records of heresy trials as well as the vernacular texts composed by English dissenters during the period 1381–1521, this article chronicles the development of Wycliffite and Lollard views about sexuality and lay and clerical marriage. John Wyclif's Latin writings reveal that he both professed caution about clerical marriage and articulated a culturally traditional theology of sexuality. Whereas his hesitation at the prospect of a married clergy gave way to enthusiasm among later dissenters, his ideas about lay sexuality resonated with dissenting and mainstream writers alike. The evidence calls further into doubt the view that Lollardy was an innovative movement with respect to issues of gender and sexuality.

This study sets the history of a friendship in the context of religious reform in Italy in the 1530s. Richard Morison and Michael Throckmorton were friends at the University of Padua but gradually became foes. In 1536 Morison returned to England to become Cromwell's propagandist and later Throckmorton began his dramatic career as Pole's agent. In Italy, however, both these young humanists had links with a group of reformers later called ‘spirituali’. Morison met them through contacts with Edmund Harvel and Bishop Cosimo Gheri. The discovery of Throckmorton's inventory shows that he owned books associated with Italian reform, including banned publications containing writings of the Northern Reformers. The rift between them was caused by political reformation in England, not religion in Italy.

Commencing with the Waldensian movement in the twelfth century and continuing with the Lollard and Hussite movements in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, critical thinkers in the Christian tradition began to stress the basic equality of all believers. The ideology of Protestantism embraced that principle in its doctrine of ‘the priesthood of all believers’, though the interpretation of the doctrine varied considerably. A century and a quarter after the inception of the Protestant Reformation, English writers engaged in a full-fledged debate on the right to preach. Before the debate had concluded, the original, strictly religious question had given rise to issues of much greater import, and in so doing had helped to create the spirit of reform which was the hallmark of Puritan England.

This paper addresses a major historical lacuna by highlighting some of the ways through which women helped to shape Irish responses to the English Reformation in Ireland. It reveals that women were often key to a web of contacts linking English resistance to the Tudors’ reformations to Irish resistance. It affirms that women played a significant role in the Reformation in Tudor Ireland, not least of all in its ultimate failure. Because virtually no Irish women became Protestants in the sixteenth century, though a small number of Irish men was converted, no self-perpetuating indigenous community of Irish Protestants was generated.